The Designing the Parks summer internship program introduces young diverse groups of students to National Park Service design and planning professions.

Main Menu

Landscape Rehabilitation at Green Hill

Those of you who have been reading my blog entries know that Jenna and I have been working with Chris on a schematic design for Green Hill. Today was an exciting culmination of this work when Chris, Bob, and I presented a plan for rehabilitation to staff from FRLA and to community members. While rehabilitation is a commonly used word with a variety of connotations, it means something very particular to the NPS. It is one of four levels of treatment along with preservation, restoration, and reconstruction. Preservation Brief 36, which is particular to landscape preservation, states that Rehabilitation, “is defined as the act or process of making possible a compatible use for a property through repair, alterations, and additions while preserving those portions or features which convey its historical or cultural values.” Put simply, rehabilitation allows for the adaptive re-use of a place as long as it does not degrade the integrity of the site.

Along with contributing to a draft report, Jenna and I helped craft drawings that communicate design ideas for the rehabilitation of the Green Hill parcel and FRLA. Jenna created images that showed what the property would look like with a reestablished wildflower and grass meadow and with a cleaned up view from Omlsted’s Fairsted landscape. I created sections and plans that show how we envision treatment objectives being implemented on the site. I’ve included Jenna’s photo simulation of clearing the viewshed from Fairsted to Green Hill along with one of my sections illustrating the same treatment recommendation.